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Drilling ANWR is not the answer to US energy challengesJust one day after a drilling well explosion on Alaska’s North Slope, the House of Representatives voted to open 1.5 million acres of the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. Unable to find enough votes to pass drilling measures as part of a comprehensive transportation bill, House leadership has resorted to political gimmicks to further the agenda of Big Oil. The Refuge is home to the greatest diversity of animals of any protected area in the entire circumpolar region, including polar bears, caribou and birds from every state. For the past 50 years our country has remained committed to protecting this unparalleled area. Its wonders have been recognized for centuries by Alaska Natives like the Gwich’in and Inupiat people who still rely on its wildlife for survival. Opening this special area to drilling is a huge risk for highly speculative and insufficient revenues. To understand what’s at stake you need only look as far as Prudhoe Bay, where less than 100 miles west of the Arctic Refuge drilling has created one of the world’s largest industrial complexes. Hundreds of spills occur in the area each year polluting waterways, damaging the land and harming wildlife. A similar fate awaits the Refuge if this bill is made into law—all to generate revenue that will come too late to fund this bill and won’t be enough to fill the funding gap. But the House didn’t stop there. They also voted to offer up millions of acres of protected offshore federal waters in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans and Alaska’s Bristol Bay to the oil industry. The fishery in Bristol Bay alone generates billions of dollars annually and communities all along the Arctic coast depend on whales, fish and other ocean bounty for subsistence. A major spill could leave oil in these waters for years. The shifting ice floes, sub-zero temperatures, and months of darkness make an oil spill in Arctic waters impossible to clean up. I have been fortunate in my life to spend time in America’s Arctic in northern Alaska. This remote region is one of the wildest spots left on the globe. I have experienced first-hand the harshness and fragility of this special place which is unlike any other. I’ve watched walrus gather on ice floes, puffins “fly” through the water, and polar bears prowl the ice edge. While watching more than 100,000 caribou move across the tundra followed by wolves and grizzly bears I experienced an inkling of what Lewis and Clark must have felt as they encountered the large bison herds in the Great Plains. I have traveled with Alaska Native people, who have lived on these lands and waters for hundreds of generations, and listened as they describe their connections to this land and the importance of these animals to their culture and subsistence. Some places are too special to drill and the Arctic Refuge is one of them. Though the oil industry continues to downplay its abysmal spill record, the most recent well explosion reminds us that drilling is a dangerous and dirty business. New drilling comes with a lot of risk, but little benefit for the transportation bill. We must invest in transportation, but we don’t have to threaten our nation’s wildest areas or rely on unsound financing to do so. Congress should be looking for ways to make our cars cleaner and more efficient and expand our transportation choices, not making us more dependent on Big Oil. Dan Ritzman is the Alaska program director for the Sierra Club’s Resilient Habitats Campaign. The preceding commentary was first published in The Hill and is republished here with the author's permission. The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch. Alaska Dispatch welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, e-mail commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com. What if they ANWR up and no body came? ANWR has been hyped all out reason. ANWR does not have an elephant structure needed to make ANWR development realistic. what there is, is a lot of possible small traps. Drilling in the Arctic Refuge will do nothing to stabilize global oil prices, nor will it do anything to create energy security for the USA. Investing in, and exporting clean energy technology, however, will accomplish these things. Drilling in the Arctic Refuge only perpetuates the status quo, our dependence on the same, old technology, which is dirty, dangerous and draconian. Come on, people. Wake up! It's actually a comical story above...Ritzman seems to think he's on a magic carpet ride and the source of energy that gets him and the happy few to pristine territory comes from...well, magic, and it will continue to keep him and his cronies happy watching pure nature with the common people end up in a world something like 1984. Oh well, the new upper classes certainly want everything their way. I've a few questions and some confusion regarding this story. He notes that, "Some places are too special to drill and the Arctic Refuge is one of them." I'm confused when and where has the Sierra Club ever supported drilling? Then he paints this visual picture, " I’ve watched walrus gather on ice floes, puffins “fly” through the water, and polar bears prowl the ice edge." I've worked on the Arctic Ocean and coastal areas all the way from Barrow to Canadian Arctic Waters so my confusion is what puffins? The Horned Puffin range is not the ANWAR area and I never saw any up there, not to say there might not be a few lost ones, but where do they nest? They like rocky areas and the coastal plain is a flat marshy area...so where do they nest? Then he writes, "Hundreds of spills occur in the area each year polluting waterways, damaging the land and harming wildlife." Hundreds? Really? Damaging? Could he list these hundreds and the damaged they've done? I'll give him credit for saying spills occur, they do, they are cleaned up...but hundreds? And damage that can't be repaired? I wonder why he didn't use actual report information from the Alaska DEC? I guess he likes living is a FACT FREE AMERICA where if there isn't enough information to support your position, then just make up some more to paint the picture of what you want it to be like. You can see more caribou in Pudhoe Bay than ANWAR since the animals are very healthy and thriving where oil development is taking place though according to some folks this cant be true in that it goes against how they believe it should be. Actually I have no problems with a stance against drilling or for drilling, just problems with extremism either to the right or the left that have to fabricate/twist truths to drum up support for their views. Oil is not just about driving around. From medicine, to the clothes we wear, to the food we eat and the internet we are conversing on right now it is about the very fabric of our modern lives. Arguments which seek to equate oil with every negative consequence of life on the planet must of necessity root like a pig in the muck of specious accusation and demagoguery to make a living. These arguments usually have a highly satisfactory emotional quotient, but do little or nothing to solve real problems in real people's lives. You can paint a pig green, but it is still a pig. The environmental movement must begin to understand that there are real people out there whose lives are significantly impacted by their stridency and messianic obstructionism. Else, when the crunch comes and the lights start going out, they will become utterly irrelevant and then the future they fear will surely come to pass. Another Hypocritical greenie. Using plastic for everything, flying in airplanes to go camping, promoting alternative energies completely dependent on oil and gas for their parts and operation. Sigh...when will they ever learn? You can't get there from here without it I'm afraid. No electric trains, buses or airplanes that I know of to take you up north. As with the raft you greenies float down ANWR's rivers in....yep you guessed it. PURE OIL! I think greenies like this senseless fellow should be made to walk naked amongst the caribou and be chased by wolfs and bears until they too become "one" with nature. They would love it and the rest of us could get on with our lives without having to be bothered by such ignorant minds. Lets see here...living in the 21st century enjoying plastic and resins and dyes and fuel and all the wonderful things mined metal and wood pulp and oil and coal and gas bring us....or choice GREEN...living in a cave starving to death fight others to kill the last living thing on earth for dinner? Hmmm. I know which one I want. Sadly for greenies like Ritzman its all or nothing, either or, man or nature. The two shall never be compatible. Damn a river for hydro...greenie lawsuit. Build a wind farm = kill a golden eagle.....greenie lawsuit. Build a solar farm and kill a turtle...greenie lawsuit. Need one say more? You can indeed get there from here...THANK GOD FOR OIL!!!! Drill it, kill it, eat it! ANWR is not a Park - it's a wildlife refuge, and it's role as such is indeed compatible with a range of other/additional uses, both known & recognized, and 'prospective'. And it will remain 'partially open' this way, as intended & designed, under applicable law. ANWR-uses can do with some refinements. Migration routes for caribou merit some focused attention. The actual ocean shoreline, and places that might be archaeological sites, should have a careful look. The Coastal Plain sucks up a lot of oxygen ... but there are several contexts down on the south-facing watersheds, to be aware of. Remember, it was possible for ANWR to be the size, extent and shape that it is, specifically & explicitly *because* it was posed 'merely' as a refuge, to be given only the lower levels of protection & preservation needed to achieve its refuge-goals. It would have been categorically unattainable, as well as quite inappropriate, to have aimed to make what became ANWR, a National Park, instead. It was made a refuge, and could be made a large refuge, because it was clear on a number of fundamentals, that it wasn't going to be, couldn't be, and shouldn't be, a Park. It is both a mistake, and in the long run counterproductive, for interested parties to react to events in & around ANWR, as though it is a Park, or should have been, etc. Now, let's not get comical on this. What state needs more fuel per capita than any other state in the Union to survive? It's Alaska. From heating fuel usage to flying (boy, do planes gobble fuel). And just what did a Russian tanker deliver to Nome this winter? Well, if there were wells and a refinery nearby...ah, don't want to mess up your pretty world, but you sure do want to live in comfort with good heating and transportation, don't you? Here's comments on the latest bit of propaganda from Big Oil. The oil lobby American Petroleum Institute weighed in on President Obama's corporate tax reform that closes an array of tax loopholes, including $4 billion in subsidies for the oil industry. Not surprisingly, API is unhappy. API President Jack Gerard played victim, calling the plan "discriminatory" against an industry that "receives not one subsidy": One day after the Obama administration unveiled a sweeping corporate tax reform plan, the oil and gas industry's top lobbyist went on the attack against the president's proposal. Calling it "discriminatory," Jack Gerard, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, said the administration's outline was more of a "Swiss cheese approach that we're trying to get rid of in this country." "The industry receives not one subsidy," Gerard claimed. "It takes tax deductions the same or similar to what all other American companies get to recover their costs of doing business." Here's a fact for Gerard: tax deductions are subsidies, as API has previously admitted. In one API document, the organization discussed "subsidies for alternative fuels" including "preferential tax treatment." Here's another fact: the industry receives a whopping $7 billion in tax breaks each year. Gerard also claimed big oil pays one of the highest effective tax rates, and yet Exxon Mobil - the most profitable oil company - paid a 17.6 percent federal effective tax, lower than the average American. The company paid zero taxes to the federal government in 2009. The oil industry is fighting to keep its handouts, despite posting record-breaking profits of $137 billion in 2011. So far, it seems like it's American families who are being discriminated against, in favor of Big Oil. Actually, drilling in ANWR is an essential part of an all-of-the-above approach to supplying our nation's energy requirements. Why shouldn't Alaska be happy to contribute? From whom much is given, much is expected. Drilling in ANWR would yield only a modest amount of oil at substantial cost to the environment. "Alaska" can't contribute anything because it's not a person, or a fictitious person only recognized by the Gang of Five on the Supreme Court. Those who depend upon the living resources that thrive because of ANWR's protection are not at all enthusiastic about their exploitation. A petition a few years ago, urging preservation of ANWR, passed around in Barter Island and Barrow, gathered hundreds of signatures in just a few days. "Drill baby, drill," the mantra of our part-time governor, clearly means "Let's use up every available domestic resource, as quickly as possible, so we'll more quickly be totally dependent on those countries which we have really pissed off thanks to our bigotry, imperialism and boneheaded foreign policy." In the unlikely event anyone is interested in where I almost stopped reading this article it was halfway through the first line where the author states, "Just one day after a drilling well explosion ... " Explosion? Sure sounds horrible and dramatic, but what explosion? In the article http://www.adn.com/2012/02/25/2337012/repsol-suspends-drilling-operations.html adn reports that "The blowout did not lead to any injuries, explosions or oil spills and the diverter worked as planned." The author likely will defend his choice of words based on some dictionary definition of "explosion" being equal to "expulsion". I came to a different conclusion. The use of the word "explosion" was an intentional, knowing and deliberate lie used in order to create a polarized political opinion in the mind of the reader in order to further poison the well of rational discourse. Shame! The author was certainly inaccurate in describing the blowout. However he may have read something from another source that was less than accurate. On the other hand, I'm very impressed with your ability to read minds. I wonder if you could go to C-Span and watch Rick Santorum's post-debate speech in Arizona? He said, referring to oil from Venezuela which has saved our bacon for many years, that it was on our "continent." Was he lying, or does he just not know the difference between a continent and a hemisphere? He went on to refer vaguely to tar sands oil as coming "out of rocks," and assured listeners that it was light, sweet crude, surging out of the "rocks" as refined as a pint of Castrol that you're topping off the crankcase with. Can you tell me if he was deliberately lying, or is he just another nitwit, like Caribou Barbie, who hasn't a clue what he's talking about. After those comments I was unable to listen any further, since none of the Tea Party types in the audience was liable to challenge these delusional notions like they would have if he had been a Democrat. I await your reply. There are standards in public discourse, even on the internet. The first is that you know what you're talking about. One must assume that the author, an employee of a once well respected organization, knows this. The logical conclusion therefore is that a deliberate manipulation of the truth to a specific end took place. As for mind reading, the assumption inherent in your argument that you know my politics proves your point, I suppose. |
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